Abstract :
Case marking is the major cue to sentence interpretation in Japanese, whereas animacy and word order
are much weaker. However, when subjects and their cases markers are omitted, Japanese honorific
and humble verbs can provide information that compensates for the missing case role markers. This
study examined the usage of honorific and humble verbs as cues to case role assignment by Japanese
native speakers and second-language learners of Japanese. The results for native speakers replicated
earlier findings regarding the predominant strength of case marking. However, when case marking was
missing, native speakers relied more on honorific marking than word order. In these sentences, the
processing that relied on the honorific cue was delayed by about 100 ms in comparison to processing
that relied on the case-marking cue. Learners made extensive use of the honorific agreement cue, but
their use of the cue was much less accurate than that of native speakers. In particular, they failed
to systematically invoke the agreement cue when case marking was missing. Overall, the findings
support the predictions of the model and extend its coverage to a new type of culturally determined
cue.
